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Boulder County ballots: Thousands could still be added to final election tallies

By John Fryar Longmont Times-Call

Posted:
11/10/2012 08:29:05 PM MST

Updated:
11/10/2012 08:29:41 PM MST

BOULDER -- Boulder County election workers are reviewing 3,262 provisional ballots to determine whether those voters were eligible to cast those ballots in Tuesday's election.

Provisional ballots that are verified will be added to the as-yet-unofficial tallies the Boulder County Clerk and Recorder's Office announced on Wednesday morning, when it reported having counted 174,364 voters' ballots in this year's election.

Brad Turner, a spokesman for the clerk's office, said many of those provisional ballots were from voters who showed up at the polls during two weeks of early voting, or on Election Day itself, but who were on county records as having been sent a mail ballot.

Research must be done to ensure that a voter didn't cast two ballots.

"Once we check our records and confirm the mail ballot was never returned, the provisional ballot from the polling place will count," Turner said.

People also were allowed to vote provisionally on Election Day when records suggested they may already have cast ballots at one of the early-voting locations Boulder County provided between Oct. 22 and Nov. 2.

Others were given provisional ballots if they showed up at the wrong precinct polling place on Election Day, or if their names weren't in the precinct's poll book, or if they didn't have the proper identification with them.

Boulder County has until Nov. 20 to verify provisional ballots.

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Boulder County Clerk and Recorder Hillary Hall said the number of provisional ballots in this year's election was "a little bit higher" than in past general elections. She said that may have been partly due to the numbers of first-time voters participating in the election, as well as because some of the county's designated precinct polling places were moved several to different locations.

Election officials have said the addition of verified provisional-ballot votes to the election tallies is unlikely to change the already-announced outcomes of any of the candidate contests or local issues on this year's Boulder County ballots.

An exception, though, may a $6.2 million bonding question for an Erie police and courts building. While unofficial final results from Weld and Boulder counties showed that measure losing by 29 votes, that could change as those counties' clerks process provisional ballots and problematic mail-in ballots from Erie voters.

On a countywide basis, Turner said Friday, at least 2,507 ballots will be added to the 174,364 unofficial total reported the day after the election, including ballots received by mail or email from voters serving in the military or from civilians temporarily living overseas.

Another 972 mail ballots may be counted in the final tally, if the voters who returned those ballots provide the necessary envelope signatures, or help election workers clear up signature discrepancies, or provide IDs if they were required. Those voters have been notified that they have to take care of those signature or ID problems by this coming Wednesday for their votes to be counted.

Boulder County also is still waiting for as many as 505 more completed ballots from military and overseas-civilian voters who'd requested them. Those ballots will count if they were postmarked no later than Election Day and the county gets them back by the end of the day on Wednesday.

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